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Drug Prohibition: Chapter V.

Chapter V:
How to Get There

Wodak, Alex, and Ron Owens. Drug
Prohibition: A Call for Change
Sydney:
University of New South Wales Press, 1996.


Reprinted with the permission of New South Wales Press. All rights reserved.

| Chapter I. | Chapter II. | Chapter III. | Chapter IV. | Chapter V. | Chapter VI.-VIII. |

Contents

| I. Is Drug Policy Reform Possible? | II. In the Beginning... | III. Winners and Losers | IV. Where to From Here? |

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I. Is Drug Policy Reform Possible? .

Many people over the years have dismissed drug policy reform as a pipe dream. They claimed it will never attract sufficient political or community support. Politicians advocating reform, they argued, would be swiftly punished by the voting public.

No-one should underestimate the difficulty of achieving major change in such a sensitive area. Yet during the last decade in Australia, there has been a readiness to support change unthinkable a generation ago.

When the Queen visited the New South Wales Parliament in February 1992, two members were severely criticised for declining to attend formal functions because of their pro-republican sentiments. Yet within a few years, Australians began to think seriously about republicanism. This experience demonstrates to us how quickly the unthinkable can become the thinkable. As the late Harold Wilson once remarked, "a week is a long time in politics".

Who would have thought a decade ago that the Soviet Union and its satellites had only months to last? Who would have thought a generation ago that Chinese communists would introduce a stock exchange and capitalism? Who would have thought a decade ago that apartheid would be dismantled peacefully and that progress towards peace would be achieved around a negotiating table in the Middle East and in Ireland?

Those who say that prohibition will never be reformed deny the events of the last decade. Now more than ever we can remind ourselves that "nothing lasts forever". But if prohibition is to be reformed how will that come about?

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II. In the Beginning...

In order to achieve change, two things are necessary. First, we need to know where we want to end up, and second, we need some idea of how we are to get there. We can see in the GAO document enumerating alternative approaches and the monograph on legislative options for cannabis in Australia the first tentative steps towards spelling out contingency plans. A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that public officials could even consider such a thing as a contingency plan for alternatives to prohibition.

The process of developing alternative options for cannabis policy is already underway in Australia. In September 1994, the Minister for Justice announced a study to estimate the costs and benefits of current policy and legislative options for cannabis in Australia. This approach marks a watershed in our responses to illicit drugs. National and international approaches have for decades been dominated by moralistic crusades about good versus evil. How different is a framework of benefits versus costs!

A similar process could and almost certainly will ultimately apply for other currently illicit drugs. Sooner or later, an individual or a committee will be asked to report on the costs and benefits of prohibition and alternative options for illicit drugs other than cannabis. Options for drugs like heroin are more constrained because of our international treaty obligations. We now have a model for dealing with the intricacies of transitions in the feasibility study conducted for the trial of controlled availability of heroin in the ACT. Options can be carefully examined, consultation undertaken and appropriate research designed and implemented. This approach can be applied to other drugs when the community and its political leaders consider it necessary.

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III. Winners and Losers

Policies that make the transition from proposals to legislation and regulation must be perceived as having more benefits than costs. There must be more perceived winners than losers.

In the United States, it is now clear that drug policy reform run across rather than between party lines. Some ultra-conservatives support drug policy reform because they regard prohibition as contrary to the inexorable laws of sound economics. Others support drug policy reform because they regard prohibition as an unwarranted attack on civil liberties. On the left of US politics, drug policy reform is supported by those who argue that it is the disadvantaged and dispossessed who pay the heaviest price for prohibition. Their major argument for reform is social justice. Support for prohibition is still very strong among ultra-conservatives who argue that a drug-free state is as American as apple pie. Any attempt to tamper with prohibition, they say, is a direct attack on the flag, family and Constitution. In the well-hallowed tradition of American extremism, they argue that in defence of prohibition, moderation is no virtue and extremism no vice. There are also strong supporters of prohibition on the American left who argue it is the disadvantaged and dispossessed minority groups who pay the heaviest price for the war on drugs because the US has never realty been serious about implementing prohibition.

In Australia, these divisions are not so readily apparent. The Australian Parliamentary Drug Law Reform Group now has over 90 signatories, with members from the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Australian Democrats and Independents. Membership includes a former Liberal prime minister, a former Liberal premier, two former Labor premiers and a number of senior former politicians. Professor Peter Baume, a former senior Liberal Senator for New South Wales for 17 years, was an early signatory. Mr Kevin Rizzoli, a Liberal former Speaker of the New South Wales Lower House, is a signatory. Drug policy reform at the moment draws more support from Labor politicians than other parties. In Australia, it is unlikely that policy in such a sensitive area will ever gain the acceptance of the community unless strong political leadership is demonstrated and cross-party support is assured.

The Australian community is divided on prohibition. As with community opinion polls on any subject, the results depend or who asks the questions. Support for reform still falls short of majority but is clearly growing. More than half the population supports major cannabis reform when the questions are asked in neutral way. There is strong support for drug policy reform among the leaders of the medical profession, who prefer to see illicit drugs redefined as a health and welfare issue rather than remaining essentially a law enforcement concern. The medical profession would also support change based on careful studies weighing up benefits and costs.

No senior Australian law enforcement official had so publicly expressed doubts about prohibition until Commissioner Johnson in 1995. But many have been expressing similar sentiments in private for some time. In the United Kingdom, senior law enforcement officials have been at the forefront of the prohibition debate. Some police chiefs from major US cities have been outspoken since the early 1990s. The Secretary-General of Interpol has also publicly questioned the viability of prohibition. Prohibition is still strongly supported by junior police officers zealous about ridding the streets of the scourge of drug abuse. It is only after they have attempted to do this for several years that they realise that every drug addict arrested in the streets is replaced almost immediately. If they successfully cleanup street drugs in a neighborhood, prices rise and property crime increases. As prices rise, corruption increases. Many senior police now realise that while they cannot win enforcing prohibition, they cannot lose enforcing alcohol and tobacco legislation. Achieving more responsible consumption of alcohol wins the police the commendation and respect they deserve from their difficult job.

Drug policy reform will never occur in Australia until there is more evidence of public support. In the United States, it was the protests of ordinary men and women calling for an end to alcohol prohibition that sounded its death knell. President Roosevelt convened the Wickersham Commission to investigate the costs and benefits of alcohol prohibition. The vast quantities of information they accumulated documenting the high price Americans were paying for prohibition helped to speed up repeal. The Commission perversely ended up giving qualified support to prohibition. But it was too late. The American people had mobilised against prohibition and repeal became inevitable.

In 1995, a group called Families and Friends of Drug Addicts was formed in the ACT, drawn from relatives of heroin users who had died from a drug overdose. Perhaps this is the beginnings of a grassroots campaign in Australia for reform of laws governing the major illicit drugs. A grass roots campaicn for cannabis reform has been in existence for decades.

Within just a few years, bans on the growing of industrial hemp have been reversed in several States. Supporters of industrial hemp point out that here is a crop which requires minimum water, no pesticides and which is friendly to the environment. The industrial, commercial and economic advantages now seem all too obvious. Prohibition of recreational cannabis has denied us the benefits of industrial hemp. Similarly, we are unable to use cannabis to alleviate preventable health problems because it contravenes the prohibition of recreational cannabis. Sooner or later, people will begin to ask why we can allow ourselves to benefit from industrial hemp and not benefit from medicinal cannabis.

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Where to From Here?

The retort is often made that to each complex question there is always a simple answer and it is always wrong. Yet this humorous obfuscation also denies the obvious. At the heart of the argument lies a simple question: do you prefer your sons and daughters and fellow young Australians to obtain adulterated drugs of unknown concentration from the criminal underworld and disgraced ex-policemen, or clean drugs of known purity from a government clinic? Once that question is answered, other issues fall into place.

Almost two of every three young Australians have tried cannabis. Do we prefer them to buy their supplies from criminals who may also try to sell them more dangerous drugs or do we dare to think, like the Dutch, of less harmful alternatives? Sooner or later, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that the least harmful option is some form of regulated supply and production.

Our options for illicit drucs other than cannabis are more constrained because of our international treaty obligations. But we can dispense drugs like heroin, amphetamines and cocaine to selected drug users through government-regulated clinics in just the same way that we prescribe methadone. The United Kingdom is a signatory to the same international treaties as Australia and heroin and other drugs have been prescribed lawfully there since 1926. Illicit drug users will need to apply to clinics and be assessed. They will need to demonstrate some evidence of using these drugs for a minimum period and complications. This system will no doubt be messy, controversial and involve difficult clinical and ethical judgements. However, the issue is not whether this is an ideal solution but whether we prefer decisions to be made by clinicians, as best they can, or by criminals. We now have the very valuable experience of methadone programs to demonstrate that over time, contradictions can be dealt with and imperfections reduced to tolerable levels. Some have queried the cost of expanded treatment. Few question the cost of the present system. In the United States, it was estimated that the cost of no treatment for a drug User for 12 months was $US43,000, while incarceration cost $US40,000, adult residential care $US16,500, methadone maintenance $US3500 and outpatient treatment $US3150. The development of a large treatment system to dispense currently illicit drugs to drug-dependent users will not be cheap but it will be much less expensive than current policy.

Getting policies like this through the Australian political system will undoubtedly be a challenge. Our experience with the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s provides a very useful model. Cross party Parliamentary Liaison Groups in Commonwealth and State Parliaments helped to achieve change. Political differences were sorted out in private so that policies emerged which saved many lives, many preventable cases of AIDS and ultimately, many hundreds of millions of dollars. We could only benefit from following similar models for drug policy reform. But we will also need a road map provided by people with sufficient technical expertise.

We have no choice but to live in a world of reality. We have lived like other nations, emulating King Canute and pleading with the tides to not move up the sand. Drug policy reform will help us become a more tolerant and compassionate country. It wilt enhance our respect for civil liberties. Reform will make illicit drug use less harmful, lessen crime, reduce the prison population, decrease police corruption and save scarce public resources. Along the road, we will require some "courageous acts" from our political masters. However, national and international experience shows us that support for drug policy reform need not be suicidal. Senator Peter Baume remained the Senior Liberal Senator for 17 years despite his open and avowed support for free availability of illicit drugs. Michael Moore, a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly, has been re-elected twice on a platform which included drug policy reform. We now have some 80 Australian politicians openly advocating reform. In the United States, Kurt Schmoke, the popular Mayor of Baltimore, has been an outspoken advocate of major drug policy reform for six years. Yet he was offered a senior position in the Clinton Administration (which he declined).

Drug policy reform will really get going when politicians realise they have more to gain than lose by supporting change. It is only a matter of time before an Australian political party concludes that its chances of capturing the youth vote will be increased by supporting cannabis reform. The party which captures the youth vote is likely to retain some of these voters as they age.

Some might argue that prohibition has failed only because it has never been given a chance to work. They say "send more troops, make one more push, victory is around the corner". But:

If all the king's horses and all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again ...

why would adding more horses and more men make any difference? The history of US alcohol prohibition and off-course betting in Australia tells us there is no choice but to live in the world as it really is.

Drug policy is often spoken of as if it was a switch with three positions: status quo, decriminalisation and legalisation. The truth is much more complicated. Drug policy is in fact much more like a dimmer switch. The previous chapter set out five major choices. Modifying the details of implementation of the policy within each major option will have a substantial impact on outcomes. At the heart of the debate lies an assumption about trade-offs between the deterrent effect of enforcement and the numbers of people who are tempted to use currently illicit drugs. Prohibition is based on a premise that increasing the harm for individuals strengthens the deterrent effect and reduces the number of consumers, thereby minimising problems for the community. Reformers argue that to liberalise policies self-evidently reduces individual harm, and that taking the profit out of trafficking will cut the number of potential users, thereby benefiting individuals and the community.

There is overwhelming support in Australia and other countries for effective methods of reducing the number of people who wish to take illicit drugs. So far, we have been unable to develop effective ways of decreasing the demand for currently illicit drugs. There is no reason why this search should not continue after drug policy has been liberalised.

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| Chapter I. | Chapter II. | Chapter III. | Chapter IV. | Chapter V. | Chapter VI.-VIII. |





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